questions re nanny pay - lunch hours etc

[goingbacktowork]

Hi. We are in the process of employing a nanny and I have a variety of silly questions. We have just got our heads round the gross /net thing but the hourly thing makes little sense to us. We would much rather just pay a gross annual salary but apparently it just does not work like this.

For some days we are going to be having just a morning and afternoon pick up. For others the nanny will be filling in the day with odd jobs etc (so some days she will work 7 hours and others it will more like 11). There will be no lunch hour for the earlier day as she wil be off doing her own thing but for the later day should I pay for a lunch hour? I am not sure when you earn an hourly rate for a job you would expect to get a paid lunch hour (my friends at nurseries don't get a paid one anyway and that is all I have to compare with) or is this unreasonable?

Second question. On the days that the nanny does school drop off should I be paying for the time she takes to get back to my house even if she does not come back here as she is not working until afternoon pick up or is it just job finished at the school? One agent says the latter and again I am not sure that is right?

Any thoughts?
Thanks

Yes you should definitely pay her for her lunch hour, presumably if she's looking after your children she won't have an hour to just sit there and relax anyway? It'll be more a case of grabbing a sandwich on the go?

With regards to paying her for the time taken to get back to your house, again presumably you want her to be on call when your children are at school in case they are ill, or on school holidays? In which case you should, really, be paying her even when they are at school if she is doing the pick up later that day, as she won't be able to look after other children in the few hours whilst yours are at school.

No she will be on her own - please read my email as I explain this. She will actually get a lunch hour. And no she will not be on call. Any chance you could read the email again? This is not a fully day job it is for the most part a school pick up and drop off role. Thanks

I had nannies for about 7 years and I never paid them by the hour. what will you do in the holidays>

Who will pick your children up from school if they're ill during the day? Just because I didn't give the answer you wanted it doesn't mean I am incapable of reading your post! I stand by what I said, that you should pay her for her lunch hour if she's working in your home. And how long is the journey back to yours? I would just round up her pay to the nearest hour. I can't believe you are quibbling over whether to pay her not for 15 minutes or so.

"I had nannies for about 7 years and I never paid them by the hour. what will you do in the holidays"

This is the ONLY way any of them want to be paid nowadays. Believe me it is. We are signed with 4 agents and they all say exactly the same. I know it is odd isn't it - hence my comment we would much rather just pay normal gross salary. None of them want that :) I have arrangements for holidays. The nanny will do same hours in the holidays.

"Who will pick your children up from school if they're ill during the day? Just because I didn't give the answer you wanted it doesn't mean I am incapable of reading your post! I stand by what I said, that you should pay her for her lunch hour if she's working in your home. And how long is the journey back to yours? I would just round up her pay to the nearest hour. I can't believe you are quibbling over whether to pay her not for 15 minutes or so."

It is not that you did not give the answer I wanted it is that you did not answer the question. If the children are ill I have my parents not the nanny. The nanny is not on "standby" at all. It is not 15 minutes or so - it will be more like 30 min which is 2.5 hours a week. I am not quibbling. I am querying what the agent is telling me as it does not sound right to me; it sounds mean hence my question.

Why can you not pay her an annual salary? Work out how much you would want to pay her for a 42 hour week (or whatever) and then pro rata it for the amount of hours she will be working. This would probably be easier if you will need her to cover family emergencies/holiday/day off from school etc.

Sorry x-post

Hi there, it does seem like a mine field doesn't it.

We have a before and after school nanny too.
She arrives at 7.30am at our house, and drops off at school for around 8.40am. She doesn't come back to our house after, but we count that as 1.5 hours because like you, I don't want to quibble over 15 minutes, and days DCs take longer to get into class than other days.

She then picks up at 3.10pm, and stays until approx 6.45 - 7.00pm. depending on when we get home. We count that as 4 hours, and if we get home early, she's free to go, and we still count it as 4 hours.

She does two or three extra sessions during the week, when the DCs aren't around, to tidy their rooms, do laundry etc - probably around 5 additional hours in total.

We do actually pay our nanny a weekly standard amount. We agreed this because a: she does a different set of hours during the hols, and b: we want a bit of give and take, and some times there are school clubs that mean DCs aren't picked up until 4.15pm etc. which is not the nanny's problem, and we woudn't want her out of pocket because of this.

Therefore, she gets the same pay every week, which over the course of the year would probably even out at around (eg) £10.50 - £11.00 per hour gross. The way we work it, our nanny probably does better out of the deal than if we paid absolutely hourly pay according to the hours worked, which I am happy about because it makes for a good relationship.

We don't even consider lunch hours - she's paid for the whole time she's with us, term time and holidays.

I think the agencies will tell you one thing - eg - it MUST be an hourly rate, but if you go on nannyjobs, childcare uk etc., and meet a nanny that you are happy to work with, then you can work out your own arrangement with your nanny.

I think as long are you're fair, and the flexibility and balance works out evenly, then you should be fine.

Good luck with going back to work x

Not a nanny and never employed one but my experience of pay & working conditions is that so long as you are not required to be 'on call', on the premises or being doing anything for your employer during your lunch break then there is no legal requirement for the employee to be paid during this time. Certainly in 13 years of retail I never got paid for my lunch, though I often ended up working through them when I became a manager lol. I did get paid for tea breaks though as we were supposed to be 'available' if the shop got really busy/there was an inquiry only I could answer.
For your second question I would say you need to assess how often the nanny will be returning to your property (ie her place of work) after the school run and where she lives in relation to the school and her workplace. If it would take her longer to get to her home from the school than it would to get to her home than yours then I would think it fair to at least pay the balance eg 30mins home from school but only 10 mins from your house pay the 20mins extra journey time. Also if she is travelling back to yours more often than not, or it varies from week to week I'd probably pay on a blanket basis for ease.

We would much rather just pay a gross annual salary but apparently it just does not work like this.

Why not. It can work like that. I have a gross annual salary mentioned in my contract. The contract states the following (~ has been used to retract sensitive information):
"The Nanny?s gross salary will initially be £~~,~~~ per annum. The salary shall be reviewed once a year on ~~~ but any increase in salary shall be at the total discretion of the Employer."

It sounds to me as though you are contracting your nanny to work a certain number of hours per week (or per month) which are agreed in advance at some point. The hours can vary, from a split 7 hours, to 11 hours worked straight through - is that right?

for the later day should I pay for a lunch hour?
Nannies work through lunch, as they will typically have children with them or duties to due or to keep an eye on (washing machine may finish during that time). Nannies are usually supplied with lunch as a sort of compensation for not having an official lunch hour where they can leave the premises.

I am not sure when you earn an hourly rate for a job you would expect to get a paid lunch hour

They are not on an hourly rate though as such... if you put in the contract that it's a Gross salary of X for working Y hours per week. Whist it may be expressed as X per hour, that I feel is just a way of expressing it in a form that may be helpful to some for comparing with other jobs which may not give annual salary detail.

Second question. On the days that the nanny does school drop off should I be paying for the time she takes to get back to my house even if she does not come back here as she is not working until afternoon pick up or is it just job finished at the school?

My view on that is that the nanny should in theory be starting work from their place of work and finishing work at their place of work. I feel that Mileage claims are based on that principle as well.

So to answer your question, yes it should be included in the working hours. However reality may be that it is easier for them to go directly home.
You could insist they go back to your house, then leave from there.

If you express it as a weekly amount which is a bit higher in term time and lower in holidays it would be fine.

The reason hourly rate are often quoted is that most jobs are a standard 37.5 hr week. Nannies working FT may do anywhere between 45 and 65. I'd want to know how, say, £20k gross pa works out in terms of work done. It certainly doesn't stop you agreeing gross pa in th contract.

Thanks bbcessex. That makes perfect sense but we are going through an agent and all the woman that have come want an hourly rate hence all of these questions? You are describing exactly what we wanted to do but the agents said the ladies just do not want it.

childrenatheart I agree re payment. I think she should be paid back to our house - it is the agents that said not necessary.

One reason I feel it should be paid as if she was going back to your house is that at some future point things could change... the school, where the nanny lives, where you live. If it is always calculated based on the school(s) location and your home (the main place of work) then it's much easier I feel in the event of anything changing.

Nanny agencies are not always very good, they are not always regulated by anyone and the people running them may have been nannies themselves in the past, not experienced recruiters. Some are great. Some are not. It's possibly why we still have Net Pay being mentioned... no other jobs are done Net (to my knowledge).

re the lunch hour, what is not commonly known is that v few employees are paid lunch. I have to work 40 hours a week. I work 8 to 5 - ie 9 hours a day, but take off an hour for lunch.

thanks this is all very helpful. I think we defintilry go for the annual salary then. makes it all a lot clearer.

I think for sanity it might depend on how regular she is at your house in the day. If regular and predictable then no problem if very ad hoc I would be inclined to say pay for the regular hours and then extra hourly for the random ones. Breaks can then be paid and taken at your house or out while e.g. picking up some milk/baking bits/party presents/wrapping paper etc. Lunch does not need to be an hour anyway if you don't want it to be.

However if you are not paying her to be on call or if there is not something in the contract that limits the number of hours you can ask her to work/week or month and a minimum notice period for you to give her for these extra hours (even then she effectively has to be on call everyday until you issue her with the rota- my NHS dentist appointments need booking 2 months in advance) then I feel that she needs to be able to say that she can't do the extra hours that particular day without anyone feeling resentful. This might be hard for her to do and for you to take.
If the jobs in house are not directly looking after the children perhaps they are more predicatble and could be organised far in advance for then you can just pay them as standard every month.

I don't feel it is fair to expect her to be there some days and not be able to say no unless she gets regular payment.

I would also add some time to drop off as sometimes she might need to settle child, check for something left there day before, talk to teachers or peers carers to arrange play dates etc.

There are some many variations in arrangements, it is very confusing to start with goingbacktowork - in fact, actually going back to and doing your job is probably the easy bit!

I know that going through an agency has it's benefits, but don't totally discount arranging / advertising for the role yourself if you want to pay a certain way - often the nanny applicants that apply through agencies also check out the nanny and childcare websites.

Our nanny is Ofsted registered, so we can also part-pay with Childcare vouchers arranged via salary sacrifice from work - you may want to check that out, as it helps reduce the cost to you.

Within childcare, being paid for lunch may be more common than in other professions. When I was a temp at nurseries, I got paid for lunch break. That break however may or may not have been an hour, it may or may not have been possible to leave the building, lunch may or may not have been provided - it all depended on the nursery manager and nursery company policy. As a temp my contract with the temp agency was that I was paid from start of shift to finish of shift.

Nannies I feel often get lunch as a perk of the job. It's not as if they can leave the children at home and go out for an hour's lunch break. It's therefore hard to compare it with other jobs - where people may well be able to decide to do other things during their lunch break away from their place of work.

Sod the agency, I'll do it for you for free.

I don't really get the role of agencies any more. Most nannies look online, most agencies say their involvement ends after placement so won't take a hand in managing the nanny, they don't know about taxes, holidays, contracts (and most people outsource that to a payroll company anyway), they might meet the candidates and check them out but they're not particularly discerning in terms of quality and most employers will redo the checks anyway so really if it's just finding a nanny you're after and you need someone to sift out the dross I might set myself up on a pay per hour basis....

thanks all. In this case re lunchhour the nanny will NEVER be with the children. They are at school. In hols if the children are here and she is with them then of course she gets paid it. nannynick all the ladies who I have interviewed who work in nurseries say they are not paid for their lunch break (nursery life seems very harsh in lots of aspects!).

"I don't feel it is fair to expect her to be there some days and not be able to say no unless she gets regular payment."

Not sure I understand She will have a set timetable - she will always do the same times for each day of week e.g. mon 5 hours tues 7 hours wed 11 hours - it will be the same every week.

"I would also add some time to drop off as sometimes she might need to settle child, check for something left there day before, talk to teachers or peers carers to arrange play dates etc."

I have already included this.

goingbacktowork re: searching for a before / afterschool nanny - you might also want to consider a nanny who has her own baby or young child to bring along; We found this opened up the number of responses we got, as the part time hours offered really appealed to nannies 'going back to work' themselves.

Nursery staff have different terms and conditions to nursery temps - maybe it's down to the temp agency I used being nice to their employees.

End of the day it's going to depend on what you decide to do and what the person who agrees to the job agrees to do. You may need to negotiate it a bit to get the right candidate. At this stage have you actually talked to the applicants about it, or are you only talking to the agency?

"Not sure I understand She will have a set timetable - she will always do the same times for each day of week e.g. mon 5 hours tues 7 hours wed 11 hours - it will be the same every week"

oh right, I must have thought hours were was more varied each week. In that case take the hourly rate and times by number of hours she works and convert to annual/pcm salary for contract (If the job doesn't continue for a year noone gains/loses per hour as it is the same pay each week anyway). Any agreed overtime at the hourly rate that you can just add on to payslip. Any frequent unprecommunicated (there's a better word fot that!) lates over 30mins I negotiate higher hourly rate for- bad experiences.

I agree to discuss with candidate at interview or ask an email to be forwarded to them. You can offer what you like but maybe meet the person first as if you can offer lunch break paid on that 11 hour day at least it makes the position more attractive, perhaps if your fav. candidate is comparing similarish jobs you probably wouldn't want to lose her/him over that.

i personally would prefer to be offered a annual gross salary! Then extra hours (holiday care, babysitting, if parents unable to have children when sick) can be charged as an agreed overtime rate, rather than faffing around and often getting a different rate of pay each week/month if the hours are quite irregular.

I think a lot of agencies are 'close minded' as to what nannies actually want, as they may well base their knowledge from their own nannying days than keeping up with the times/individual people. I do not understand why agencies STILL advertise job salaries in NET terms, but expect the candidates to agree a gross with the parents?! Very confusing -

Good luck

thanks all. I think we have found a good nanny and definitely going to try and agree a egross salary with the extra hours at agreed overtime rate. Thanks all.